I’m a Greens Party member and supporter. But you probably knew that. I reckon I’ve mentioned it before.
It’s an odd choice in some ways. My tribe ought to be Labour. That’s my family background, my political heritage, hardcore Labour. But not me. If I had to explain why in just a couple of words, those two words would be Roger Douglas.
He’s in the Herald this weekend. Even at the age of 86, bemoaning that other Finance Ministers didn’t do to this country what he did. To which I would say “Thank God!” and also “watch this space Roger, because I think you’ll be quite pleased with Nicola Willis.” A woman after your own heart(lessness).
I remember the celebration in 84 when the Lange government won and we were finally rid of, in the terminology of the day, “that bastard Muldoon”. I was 12 years old, nearly 13. By the end of the fourth Labour government I was 19. Throughout my teenage years Roger Douglas set about his neoliberal experiment, and did more damage to this country than anyone else I’m aware of.
Increasing inequality and making the lives of many people worse. I never forgave him for it, or the Labour MPs who went along with it.
I watched with admiration as Jim Anderton broke away to form New Labour. Saying “I did not leave the Labour Party; the Labour Party left me”. I think Jim was a great New Zealander and he inspired me, as Mr Douglas was tearing the country apart - apparently in order to save it.
In my last newsletter I wrote about seeing politicians in person and hearing what they have to say. I went and saw Jim Anderton and Pam Corkery speak in the Maidment Theatre when I was at Uni in the mid 90s. A number of politicians came and spoke there, I even quite enjoyed a speech by National Party MP Maurice Williamson. But it was Jim and Pam that inspired me, and I became an Alliance voter.
In 1996, our first MMP election, the Alliance did very well increasing their representation from 2 MPs to 13 MPs. Come 1999 and the Greens were running separately from the Alliance, the former gaining 7 seats and the latter 10 seats. By 2002 it had fallen apart, with the Greens, Jim Anderton’s Progressive Party, and the Alliance, all running separately.
I became a Green Party supporter, and then about a decade ago a member. For Red reasons as well as Green reasons. I certainly care about environmentalism and climate change, but the truth is I chose the Greens because I’m a socialist and they were the most socialist party that was viable. Up until December 2011 Labour was still lead by people who had been cabinet colleagues of Roger Douglas.
Sometimes it isn’t all that easy supporting the Greens. Sometimes they say things that make me cringe and think - couldn’t you just for once do what is politically expedient, rather than making an issue over this? But they never do. And when I think back on it I find I’m glad that they don’t. It is good to support a party that says the hard things honestly, even if they’re not popular things to say.
From time to time there is the odd scandal, but they are pretty minor compared to what MPs from other parties get up to. The worst they tend to do is be a bit too PC for some, or a bit too honest.
Green party members, and in particular the delegates, have more say than in other parties when it comes to things like approving coalition agreements, determining the order on the party list, or even changing a party leader. But as a result the Greens sometimes end up airing their laundry in public. Other parties that make these decisions behind closed doors present such information in a much more polished way.
So we have brain farts like last July when a couple of excited delegates decided to launch a coup to remove James Shaw as leader. Seemingly without any thought as to what would happen next. Like for example checking if anyone else wanted to actually put their hand up for the job.
The Greens, being the nice people they are, just forgive this sort of thing. Rather than the more natural response of throwing the delegates out of a high window, that you might expect.
Did this brain fart matter in terms of James Shaw’s leadership. Well it caused minor reputational damage - well done delegates, top marks - but not really.
Did it give the Greens caucus an opportunity to show their loyalty to James? Yes.
And did they? Oh, hell no!
Teanau Tuiono and Elizabeth Kerekere demonstrated such a lack of support that it could only be interpreted as a statement they wanted to replace James themselves, or as breathtaking naïveté.
You might be thinking - Elizabeth, ah that’s the same lady that’s been in the news for sending mean messages about Chlöe Swarbrick. Is that where I knew the name from?
To which I’d say probably not. You’re more likely to have seen the name in relation to the time the Green Party leaders had to report Elizabeth to health authorities for not following the well understood Covid restrictions that every person in the country was supposed to follow. Especially MPs!
I can see you shaking your head. Well, there is one other reason you might have seen her name recently, apart from the mean messages. Last week the Greens announced their initial party list for the election. The big winner was Elizabeth Kerekere, with a massive jump from 9th place to 4th place.
Don’t look at me like that. I know anyone outside the Greens could have told you the top four were obviously Julie Anne, Marama, James, and Chlöe. Yes, I did tell you the members got to have their say, but this is just the initial draft. A starter for ten.
So where did the list come from? Ahh, did I mention the delegates?
It is hard to know what the thinking from the delegates was, once again. But once again I don’t think it resembles the thinking of the wider membership. I would fully expect that once the members have had their say Elizabeth Kerekere will have quite a different position on the list.
I find it quite hard to get excited about the latest news story, about a message being sent to the wrong chat. Seriously, what does it matter to anyone that wasn’t on the private chat? Hello! We do have climate change and a cost of living crisis - are we seriously going to spend time focussing on this? I’m sure we’ve all accidentally sent something to the wrong person, or group of people, before.
There was a time I was working on a software project for most of the regional councils in NZ. It was running behind schedule and over budget due to not having been costed properly. So pretty standard stuff. One of the reasons it was running behind was that all the different councils, who apparently had to do things their own way, needed to sign things off at frequent intervals. One such milestone was Acceptance Testing of a set of functionality. The councils hadn’t done their testing.
I forwarded that information to my boss with a very snarky email saying no wonder this project is so far behind if they can’t bloody do the tasks assigned to them. Minutes later it became apparent I hadn’t forwarded it to my manager. Can you guess the next part?
Yes I’d sent it “reply all”, to all the different councils.
They were pretty good about it to be fair. Their Project Manager replied back to everyone saying that while I obviously hadn’t intended to send them the message I did raise a fair point. And they could hardly complain about project delays when they were the ones causing them. Good times.
I care about following the Covid rules. I care about showing a bit of loyalty when you’ve only been in the place for five minutes and have no business thinking it might be time for you to be the leader. I don’t think that’s the sort of performance that should result in a large jump up the party list.
So I care about those things. But an incorrectly sent message?
Don’t get me wrong, even though it looks like it went to the wrong place it is a mean spirited thing to say, and it gives us an insight into the person that sent it. But a major news story? Seriously?
We’ve got some really big challenges ahead of us, climate change, inequality. Could we stop distracting people with this nonsense? It’s hard enough being Green as it is.
I think you are hitting on one of the key problems with msm in NZ. I'm listening to RNZ at the moment and keep saying, it's not that I don't trust msm in that I don't believe they lie to us but I am deeply sceptical about their lack of perspective and what they think is balance, even if they are seeking it. A good example was RNZ yesterday leading news bulletins with the ram raids and having Sunny Kaushal as the spokesman for dairy owners. What he said was straight out of the National Party, Sensible Sentencing Trust, lock em up and throw away the key brigade hymn book - fanning flames, exaggerating, saying retail crime is out of control, nothing is being done, need zero tolerance to retail crime etc. There was not any effort to provide any balance or perspective, challenging this with a much more informed, balanced, objective comment from another party.
Like you, I will never forget Roger Douglas' major part, together with Richard Prebble, in destroying the social fabric of New Zealand with their neoliberalism. Every time I even see their names in the media, my hackles rise. I voted Green in 1990 as a result but not since. It is interesting to see what the media chooses to seize on "news" and the 50 course banquet they chose to make out of the text sent by Kerekere was unbelievable. NZ Herald even had it down to a frame by frame reaction by two Green MPs sitting behind Chloe Swarbrick. No wonder people are turning off our msm with its overwhelming predilection for making mountains out of molehills